Since then, SEOmoz has been doing somde extensive data gathering, investigating the situation further. Kurtis Bohrnstedt, the company’s “Captain of Special Projects” gathered a total of 2,678 directories, and only found 200 of them to be banned, but an additional 340 to be penalized (as in not de-indexed, but not ranking for obvious terms where they would be the only result that makes sense).

Still, that’s only 540 directories out of 2,678. It would seem that there are a lot more directories in the clear, but Bohrnstedt thinks this is only Google sending a warning, and that there is likely more to come.

“That is not to say the ones left unharmed are safe from a future algorithmic update,” he writes. “In fact, I suspect this update was intended to serve as a warning; Google will be cracking down on directories. Why? In my own humble opinion, most of the classic, ‘built-for-SEO-and-links’ directories do not provide any benefit to users, falling under the category of non-content spam.”